California Books

Take my advice from one artist to another... this book has impact. It has added so much to my understanding of what I do, and how I view abstracted figurative art in general. I recommend this book to all artists who work in figures. The reproductions in this book are full of color and there is very little to complain about. For those who are not artists, but enjoy reading about the subject, this book fulfills. You read about the artists struggles, success, personal lives and how they came to be THE Bay Area Figurative Artists. Their art, timeless... and this book lends them the respect they deserve but rarely get.

Michael Aldana
www.michaelaldana.com

Bay Area Figurative Art: 1950-1965

This is a wonderful book with a specific emphasis on the bay area figurative scene circa 50's & 60's. It vignettes several artists from the heavily enriched San Francisco Bay Area. I found it a good place to discover some lesser-known artists that played a part of the emerging figurative art movement. This book presents the last stirrings of abstract expressionism into the birth of a newly re-discovered figure. If you enjoy the works of Richard Diebenkorn , David Parks, Paul Wonner, Joan Brown, Elmer Bischoff, you may find a few other artist in this book to investigate further.

I had the opportunity to see this show in Philadelphia and it absolutely blew me away. Not only does it include Richard Diebenkorn's best work, but it also includes work by Paul Wonner, Elmer Bischoff, Manuel Neri, Nathan Oliveira and David Park (among others). I have drawn endless inspiration from this book and you most likely will too.

We have almost all of the Becka books now and read them to our son all of the time. I especially love the Becka Goes to San Francisco book. My husband proposed to me under the Golden Gate Bridge and we lived in the area for several years. We love having a children's book that exposes the wonders of such a special place with our son. Now when we take him to San Francisco, he can immediately relate to all of the sites he's seen in his Becka book.

Both my girls just adore Becka and her adventures. My two-and-a-half year old loves it when Beck blows a bubble and floats off to her next adventure. My five-year-old is just tickeled by the rhyming story line and asks question-after-question about the cities Becka visits on her bubble. I especially love reading the "San Francisco" version, being that I grew up there and the authors magical story-telling bring back some wonderful memeories of childhood. It's truly a book any child will love! We have all the "Becka" books and can't wait for the next one! It's soon to be a classic!

This is such a wonderful book! My 3 year old son was given this book as a present. We loved the book so much we bought all the other Becka and the Big Bubble books!

This is an outstanding book that should be read by policy makers, academics, activists and elected leaders. Great effort and job. This is the best book on the subject.

In a book that is essential to our appreciation of social inequality and class stratification in America, Edna Bonacich and Richard Appelbaum write Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry. Basically, Behind the Label is an in depth study of the phenomenon of the proliferation of garment industry sweatshops in the Los Angeles area in. These sweatshops, Bonacich and Appelbaum et al argue, needs to be examined in relation to other factors: 1) the demise of American welfare, 2) the weakening of union involvement, and 3) juxtapose that to the globalization and caustic effect of "flexible production" (Bonacich 258).
In contrast to the bullish Thomas L. Friedman of The World is Flat fame, Bonacich and Appelbaum use the apparel industry in LA as a stark counterpoint to a neo-conservative economic framework and come up with an example of a Marxist inspired social scientific examination of the political economy (Bonacich 62). In this book, the manufacturers now have economic justifications to, at will, move production to wherever low-wage labor can be facilitated (Bonacich 56 - 57). Power, in this scenario, sits squarely in the hands of a cabal of powerful manufacturers and their comprador contractors. Unlike the high tech examples of Friedman - things are not getting better for these low tech workers, on the contrary, things are getting worse (Bonacich 180 - 181, and 196 - 199).
Manufacturers can substantially distance themselves from the sweatshops as they neither own them nor invest in them. The word is "plausible deniability" and manufacturers can deny working with sweatshops as they are buffered through contractual agreements only. Contractors serve as modern day middle man compradors (Bonacich 150 - 151). This distance protects the manufacturers and makes it difficult to call them account for the less than humane treatment of the lowest factory worker. In reality, the connection is direct and real. Manufacturers often, and Bonacich and Appelbaum posit, that manufacturer send a quality control representative - who comes almost on a daily basis - and can, and often do dictate delivery schedules.
With so much of the industry already moving south of the border, we are starting to see a sharp increase in imports of product into the United States and a decline in employment in local sites. Having said that how is it that there is still so much done in the LA area? Los Angeles is an enigma in that the industry continues to grow, is very resilient, and is, in effect, has become garment capital of America (Bonacich 36). One explanation is the ready supply of low-income immigrant (a mix of documented and undocumented) work force (Bonacich 189 - 190).
Behind the Label looks at the key group of actors in the L.A. apparel industry: manufacturers, contractors, retailers, and labor. Taken along each of these areas, Bonacich and Appelbaum evaluate and hope to ameliorate what they see as a disparity vis-à-vis wealth (Bonacich 115 - 126). Moreover, Bonacich and Appelbaum also take to account the role of government and the unions play in trying to get rid of sweatshops on the one hand while concurrently preventing the flight of jobs to places like Mexico and others that take the outsourcing (Bonacich 245 - 246). The book ends with a very interesting but idealistic adage of instituting more government controls and increase union involvement. Pretty much only the future knows what will happen.
Several questions come to mind, most which defy easy answers. Bonacich and Appelbaum et al are straightforward about their social agenda - that is to side with labor (Bonacich xi - xv). One has to wonder if their stated position colors or informs their analysis. Grounded on several interviews, statistical data, surveys, and ethnographic fieldwork (mostly participant observations), Bonacich and Appelbaum are careful not to seem flippant about the role of the manufacturers and contractors.
As a short backgrounder, 1965 was a watershed year for Asian immigration. Altering what began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, continuing on with the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907, and on and on until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Asian immigration was either closed or limited. The opening up of immigration to about 20,000 per county per year regardless of area of origin had a tremendous impact on the demographic picture of the United States. Sender countries like India, Korea, and the Philippines flooded the embassies with request for visas on an occupational/skill preference grading system and later with family re-unification request that did not fall under the quota system. Mind you, this is was all facilitated not out of American altruism but rather on a "pull" basis that was needs driven and greased on a "push" system that was a "brain drain" to sender nations.
The rise in Asian immigration had a remarkable impact on the demographic picture of the United States (Bonacich 169 - 170). There were dramatic shifts in and around the mostly inner city areas - of which we see in an example like Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, we see an already evolved stratification that seems to conflate race with class in a mostly white Jewish manufacturing strata (Bonacich 31 - 44), a middle class mostly Korean and Chinese contractor segment (Bonacich 150 - 151), and mostly a poor and working class group of Mexicans and Southeast Asians (Bonacich 189 - 190). Bonacich and Appelbaum are all too ready to bring to presence the El Monte case of Thai laborers who were practically incarcerated in this prison like sweatshop scenario that is both heartbreaking but more importantly very telling of a class divide that is not just apparent, it is cultivated (Bonacich 141).
Bonacich et al pen an interesting and compelling anecdote of the authors need to purchase a dress for a dinner/fund raiser dance for Jonathan Bernstein that raised a whopping $300,000 and cost Bonacich $300.00 for a dress that she seemed ill at ease to select and wear (115). Juxtaposed to this spectacle of extravagance was a yarn that marked Bonacich's involvement in a discussion with contractors and unions of which she was later treated like a pariah (Bonacich 123). The juxtaposition, I argue, is no coincidence. On the one had, one sees extravagance. On the other hand, we see abject poverty looking for spaces of resistance and justice. What is really more telling is that at the top of end of the food chain we see millionaires who are all too willing to donate to philanthropic causes (in an effort not to be seen as exploitive) but are also all too willing to keep wages below an "acceptable living" wage as demanded by ideological capitalism - it is all about efficiencies really. The race to the bottom is on (Bonacich 159).
There were also some curious but unanswered issues: there are no African Americas in the entire gamut and there is no discussion of gay and lesbian involvement in the industry. With so many African Americas in and around the LA area - and by far some of the most prolific consumers of fashion, why are there so few or actually no African Americas in the manufacturing process (Bonacich 172)? Moreover, with such a representation of gays and lesbians in the industry, why are they not included in the discussion? I find no speculative answer in the book nor do I wish to venture a guess.
Juxtaposing this book with Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat reveals that arguably Friedman is too bullish on the trends he outlines. Both books are clearly written from an American Rashomon or point of view but Behind the Label is clearly on side of labor and The World is Flat is clearly on side of capital. While Friedman is a reporter for the New York Times and Bonacich is a professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside - their respective backgrounds clearly influenced the writing of their books. Once could conceivably argue that there is no one size fits all in globalization studies and that Los Angeles (U.S.) or Ciudad Juarez (Mexico) is not Bangalore (India) and vice versa. Welcome to the new economic world order of 2008.

Miguel Llora

"Los Angeles is now the apparel manufacturing center of the United States" (page 16). 2,900 sewing companies work in LA for the 185 firms. Sadly, the apparel manufactureres use sweatshops.

According to Dr. Bonacich and Dr. Appelbaum, a "sweatshop" is a factory that fails to pay a living wage and does nto allow a worker to purchase a house and health care(page 11). Sadly, workers make less than the poverty line of $7,200 a year. Hence, concerned citizens like us wonder how sweatshops come to be and exist?

Again, according to Dr. Bonacich and Dr. Appelbaum, sweatshops are caused by 1) a high turnover in styles (14), 2) low tech tools, such as sewing machines, 3) the neglect of union representation, 4) cheap start-ups in other countries, 5) cheap labor, and 6) bossy retailers. The authors write, "Thousands of contractors can produce small lots rapidly. The city's industry is primed for the production of fashion at cheap prices" (p. 18). Thus, Los Angeles is the "sweatshop capital of the U.S" (p. 19).

A city of sweatshops is not a healthy city. ""Polarization is destructive to society." A Chinese person making $25.00 a month cannot afford $100 pair of shoes" (p. 24). Furthermore, immigrants do not have access to politicians, since wealthy people can buy lobbyists and call the govenor and threaten to move the industry. 2.9 million Angelinos make less than $20,000 yr.

The solution to sweatshops is to spread the cost-cutting activities in every area of apparel manufacturing. "Yet cost cutting is never aimed at the executives professionals or profits." As a result, "the garment industry is a throwback to the earliest phases of the industrial revolution" (p. 14).

I hope the supervisors in the valuable garment industry read this fine book.

This was an incredible book. Judith Pella kept you in suspense until the very last pages as she unfolded the story of Shelby and Frank. I encourage you to READ THIS BOOK!

Shelby has just lost her Dad, the only parent she has ever loved. She impulsively decides on a vacation in Puerto Vallarto, MX and while there, meets, falls in love and marries a man who is practically a stranger to her. Frank is a Mexican-American, well to do,and handsome man who shares her intense love in a whirlwind, one week romance.

However, coming back to their homes in Los Angeles, reality hits hard. Shelby learns of Frank's incredibly dysfunctional yet close knit traditional Mexican family. His mother makes no secret of the fact she hates Frank for his past mistakes. A grandmother adores him and a younger brother idolizes him.

When Frank's moods and behavior start taking wild swings, Shelby realizes there is much she has yet to learn about her mysterious new husband. The only things she is sure about is his love for her and for his boat and the sea. Both are about to be challenged.

Drugs and drug use figure hugely in this book and their effects on Frank and his brother Ray play an integral part. Illegal drug activity is at the root of most if not all the hatred, tension, loyalty and fast money which define the lives of the two brothers and their family.

Just when things are already confusing and volatile, Frank's ex-wife Gloria is found murdered. With drugs such a part of his past, Frank now has some major questions and decisions...who did kill his ex? Were drugs involved? The police seem dead certain that Frank is their man, but is he really? There is lots of circumstantial evidence, and Frank admits he was there the night she died.

At the very lowest point in this family's life, when there is no place to turn and no one else to help them, Frank and Shelby finally turn to the God of his grandmother and her mother, Dawn.

This is a really touching love story containing mystery and religion and is a book with deep emotion and lots and lots of surprises.

. . . but somehow, Judith Pella manages to create fresh, new characters with every book she writes--characters that aren't quite like any of the others she's introduced us to. Shelby and Frank are no exception! Shelby is at once endearing as the book opens with her father's funeral and the reader naturally sympathizes with her. Because of her impulsive nature, I found myself thinking so many times, "I would NEVER do that! " but it didn't make her any less appealing as the misguided heroine of the story. Frank, too, is a well-written character. He has the dark good looks, mysterious past, and serious passion that make him the ideal hero; but at the same time, there are his fun, flippant moods and his vulnerability which make him more than a cardboard stereotype. For a romance especially, the plot moves at near-hyperlight speed (once you get past the first chapter or so), with lots of twists and turns and interesting secondary characters. And as always, with Pella at the pen, the happily-ever-after ending isn't insultingly happy, but bittersweet. Wonderful job all around creating relationships between characters and intertwining lives in the most unlikely ways. Can't wait for her next book!

Overall, this is an excellent guide book. Attempting to cover the entire state of California in a single volume, the authors freely admit that their "list" is incomplete and that they had to whittle the book down to include a limited selection of historical sites from among the hundreds found throughout the state. Fortunately, the coverage of the places that made the cut is excellent, providing plenty of background information about not only the mission, mansion, or museum itself, but also its place in California history. Websites are listed when available, allowing the visitor to check out updated information prior to a visit. My only recommendation would be that the authors consider publishing a second volume that would add in the many deserving sites that couldn't be included in this book.

If you're a California resident or library seeking a fine blend of California trivia facts and history and a travelogue to the state's best museums, then you can't go wrong with Best of California's Missions, Mansions and Museums. It functions like a travel guide by offering hours, costs, contact information and trip and tour itineraries for visitors - and it functions like a history book in providing a healthy dose of background history about each establishment. The 'don't miss this' tips are particularly well done.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Thanks to the Internet, it's easy these days to compile and publish lists of things, such as bed and breakfast getaways or suspension bridges or pet friendly parks, but rarer for authors actually to visit the venues they write about. That's what impressed me about "Best of California's Missions, Mansions and Museums" ($21.95 in paperback from Wilderness Press) by Ken and Dahlynn McKowen out of Sacramento.

The couple, along with Dahlynn's two children, 9-year-old Shawn and his sister, 14 year-old-Lahre, hit the road for four months, visited some 200 sites and racked up 10,000 miles on the odometer. The result, after some editing, are chatty descriptions of 135 family-friendly California missions, mansions and museums. This is a good guide to consult if one is planning a summer vacation in the Golden State.

The listings, write the authors, "provide a broad geographic and subject-matter selection of California's missions, mansions and museums, primarily as they relate to California's history and culture." Picking the "best" was difficult, subjective of course, and a lot of places were not included (such as most science and technology museums) that didn't meet the criteria of illuminating state history.

In the area of missions, "our final choice came down to 13 missions that we felt included not only wonderful museums, but retained much of their original or at least their early 20th century restored historic fabric. ... We chose our favorite mansions in much the same way as the missions, but we added accessibility -- how frequently they are open to the public for tours."

For museums, the authors concentrated on smaller collections. "We didn't choose them because of their size or the value or rarity of their collections, although we certainly considered those things. ... We considered their uniqueness, not only in the types of collections and the variety of artifacts, but also in how they relate to California's overall history or to their local community's history."

The book is divided geographically, from the North Coast, through the Great Valley and on to the South Coast and desert. Each section has a numbered locator map, trivia questions and introduction. Each two- or three-page entry features a "what's here" list, a "don't miss this" note, a description of the venue, usually a small black and white photograph and a box providing operating hours, cost, location and the Web site. The book also features an index and a list destinations by category.

The chapter devoted to the Great Valley includes entries for the Turtle Bay Exploration Park (including the Sundial Bridge) in Redding, and Chico's own Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park.

The authors note that the second floor of the mansion "features several of the home's 12 bedrooms. That was not a good location for bedrooms in a town where summer temperatures reach 100 degrees, and upstairs rooms become even hotter. Possibly, the plantation windows served as summer escapes to cooler sleeping arrangements on the outside balcony. The indoor toilets that Bidwell included were thought strange by his neighbors and visitors. Many believed that having to perform such bodily tasks inside a house, rather than in an outhouse, was unsanitary."

And there is some Great Valley trivia. "Where can you find the very first Pony Car (Mustang) manufactured by Ford?" It's at the Towe Auto Museum in Sacramento. The car is a white convertible, the first to roll off the assembly line back on April 9, 1964.

See you on the road!

Copyright 2007 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

This book highlighted the best short hikes that anyone can do. What's so great about the book is you can select a bunch of short hikes that you can do in one day. You'll feel like you have gained a great overview of each of the parks by going on these short hikes because they're all quite different. Plus the book is small and light enough that you can take with you on the hike. It's great to read the passsage as you embark on the start of your hike to refresh your memory of what you'll encounter along the way. We even saw a black cub on one of these hikes. Not too scare anyone off, but we thought it was pretty cool since we're city folks. Happy hiking!

One would be hard pressed to find better authors for a hiking guide to the Northern California Redwood Forests. Jerry and Gisela Rohde have already published two excellent travel guides to the area and their works are a delight to read. Perhaps the single best feature of this book is that the authors actually limited themselves to describing only short and easy walks in the region. (This is in sharp contrast to some of the other Mountaineers Press "Short Hikes" guides which have been known to include 22 mile hikes!) Of the sixty-four hikes included in this book, twelve are less than a mile, and only seven exceed 5 miles. Literally anyone can find a walk suited to them among those listed in this book.

This book has several other nice aspects as well. Mileages for trails are accurate to within 1/20 (.05) miles. The Rohde's also provide graphic representations of the amount of elevation you can expect to gain or lose over the course of a hike. Finally, each hike includes a sketch map of the trail and most include stunning black and white photographs that are almost worth the price of the book alone.

If I have any complaint at all about this book, it is that I would have begun coverage of the North Coast Redwoods at Richardson Grove State Park rather than Humbolt Redwoods. Richardson Grove appears right after you cross the Humbolt County line while traveling north on Hwy 101. It is at this point you truly know you are in Redwood Country. The many beautiful trails there merit a visit if you are coming into Humbolt county from the south.

That said, the authors are to be commended for including Humbolt Redwoods State Park since it is outside the boundaries of the National Park and often overlooked. I personally think the F.K. Lane Grove walk (Hike 1 in this book) is the single best stroll among redwoods in the state. Humbolt Redwoods State Park is also the location of the tallest redwood trees, National Park claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Prarie Creek Redwoods State Park also receives much needed attention in this volume. I hope to spend several days there the next time I go north.

This book is simply a "must buy." Any trip to the Northern California Coast without it is incomplete. Also be sure to pick up the authors' other two books. They contain delightful local histories of the region and are a joy to read.

Written by longtime area residents, this handy guide reads south to north, has small but good trail maps, includes interesting historical details, and contains a healthy number of good-quality (alas, B&W) photos. An appendix lists Park and Campground information but the book does not cover lodging and dining facilities. The book concludes with a helpful index.

The front of the book features several pages of tables grouping hikes according to whether they feature Rivers, Creeks and Ponds, or Lots of Wildflowers, Old Growth Redwoods, Beaches and/or Coast, and even hikes for Terrific Fall Color. Also included are miles and difficulty.

Trail and hike descriptions list the essentials: length, difficulty, elevation; and for the photographers among us, indispensable details such as areas rich in spring wildflowers, as well as areas with concentrations of deciduous trees that lend themselves to good fall color, also riparian scenes, and of course old-growth stands of the most stunning Giants themselves.

I'm in the planning stages of a trip to Redwood Country and after just reading this book cover-to-cover, it may be the only guide I need.

May is American Studies Prof. at U. of MN,& wrote: "Screening Out-the-Past" He dislikes Bob Hope-Bing Crosby's.."mindless' Road pictures,also Ronald Reagan,(head, Screen Actors Guild)for stifling emerging "left-wing",independent producers,& all those who were not 100% anti-communist. Hopefully, he'll prove his points by updating with coverage of post 60's Hollywood....

This book is a well researched account of Hollywood during the Depression, World War II and at the beginning of the Cold War. It is a must for everyone interested in the history of Hollywood.

"The Big Tomorrow" depicts Hollywood as a 'populist and progressive world that offered a vision of an egalitarian and humanitarian world in film' before the 1950s. The author demonstrates this on the example of actor Will Rogers, a Cherokee Indian, director Frank Capra, and others. May shows that not only film content had changed but the theatres as well. The central themes were gangsters, fallen women and ribald comics while the language and dialects of the folk were used. The theatres underwent a change from lavish, sumptuous ones, where seating was divided between the high-paying and low-paying, to democratic movie houses. The author uses several photographs to illustrate the changes. Inside Hollywood actors, directors etc. formed unions that supported New Deal reforms. The second part of the book explains why World War II and the Cold War reshaped politics and moviemaking in Hollywood. May discusses censorship and the role of CIA agents in Hollywood. Films presented a 'new' woman now. Female characters focused ultimately on a home life that preserved traditional gender roles, symbolized in the rise of 'patriotic domesticity' while during the Depression female characters of 'empowered women' fulfilled themselves. May also points out the change in the portrayal of African Americans and Asians. The rise of anti-communism and its effects are dealt with. Those who wouldn't or couldn't prove their belonging to the communists were suspended. However, they found a new market for a dark 'film noir' that challenged the consensus and set the stage for a youthful counterculture in the 1950s and 1960s.

This is one of those books that is difficult to over praise. Over and over while reading this book, May helped me gain new insight into aspects of Hollywood cinema from the thirties, forties, and fifties, and continually suggested to me new areas of research to undertake. In the long run, I believe that his book is going to have a profound effect on the way that I view movies from those decades.

Before I move on to the considerable praise I want to heap on this book, let me dwell briefly on a couple of negatives. I think this book has a much broader appeal than the author might believe. The book takes an essentially popular subject, and couches it in an overly academic style. As someone with a strong graduate school background (albeit in philosopher rather than cultural studies), I managed to always make sense of his argument, but sometimes only with difficulty. There was also a too-heavy reliance on statistical data for my taste. Clearly he feels that the data gives greater force to and to a degree validates many of his arguments. But I feel that it also caused the book to drag at points.

But overall, this book is a stunner. The thesis of the book is a complex one, and any attempt to state it briefly will distort it to a degree. I will try to minimize my distortion. May begins by arguing that there was a radical shift in social and political outlook in Hollywood in the 1940s. The effort in Hollywood to eliminate political dissent and to promulgate a monolithic vision of America is well known. May argues that this was a break with the legacy of the thirties, in which the Hollywood talking film had developed as a mode of expressing an egalitarian, anticapitalist, and multicultural affirmation of the New Deal. Thirties films were highly critical of big business, with representatives of big business frequently appearing as villains in films. As America entered WW II, however, and began to unify in order to oppose first Hitler and Japan and then the Red Menace, movies reflected a different order, which was nonegalitarian, pro-big business (with big business disappearing as a villain in films), and nondissenting.

May attempts to tell this story in several ways. His brilliant first chapter dwells at length on the movie career of Will Rogers, who articulated a vision of America that varied greatly from the Anglo-Saxon dream that looked to Europe for models of success and social ordering. As May quotes on several occasions, in response to the New England social elite, Rogers, who identified with his Cherokee heritage, wrote, "My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower--they met the boat." The second chapter of the book continues this to display many example of multicultural republicanism that permeated 1930s filmmaking. He then proceeds, in perhaps my favorite chapter in the book, to demonstrate how this egalitarian vision of America profoundly influenced American movie theater design. Rejecting the theater palaces that dominated 1920s theater design and which represented an affirmation of the social layering of the European model--with different prices of admission for various areas and separate entrances--American designers moved to a conception where all viewers paid a uniform price and seating was not restricted, with all viewers entering through the same entrance.

The second half of the book deals with the undermining of the egalitarianism of the thirties by a new vision of Americanism in the forties. The first of two chapters devoted to this displays this by articulating the vision of a white consumer culture, where individuals look for freedom in a private realm emphasizing family and material comfort. The second chapter deals with the politics in Hollywood to help eliminate all those who dissented from this vision or who had a political history that did not conform to this vision. These were painful chapters to read, with the ruthless suppression of political dissent. May deals in some degree with the history of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), which in the 1930s strongly affirmed the ideals of the New Deal and egalitarian ideals. In particular, the career of the first appointed president of the SAG (in the 1930s, the president of the SAG was elected by the membership), Ronald Reagan (i.e., he was not elected by the membership at all) is dealt with at length. May ends his book with a discussion of film noir and its attempt to express dissent from the accepted and sanctioned cultural norm.

Anyone interested in cultural studies, the political climate and culture of the US in the thirties and forties, or the history of Hollywood should read this book. Easily one of the more compelling books I have read on film in the past two or three years.

If you have ever dreamed or wondered about what it must have been like to travel cross-country to California in the days of the gold-rush, you will enjoy - and learn from this book. The story is filled with bits of history, some of the heartbreaks and lessons of life, and the challenges and dangers of travel in a covered wagon - with a feel of the huge achievement of crossing the vast west. The story is flowing with human interest, offering young readers the opportunity to identify with Billy's experiences.

A good yarn about the old West
Reviewed by: Pearl Nancarrow (9/21/2005)
History comes alive in this well-researched tale of a young man heading West. Billy becomes part of the vanguard of all that is western when he signs on to help lead a wagon train from Missouri to the gold fields of California. This gem of a story is historically accurate from the wagons and their contents, the place names along the way, to the names of some of the people involved. The story wends its way from adventure to hardship, from pride of achievement, the thrill of new life and to the heartbreak of death along the trail. Billy not only grows up on this trek, he gains wisdom and matures into responsible adulthood. Walter Wood spins a "good yarn", in that a young reader can also learn a great deal about the movement west,and the 1870s in general. As a former teacher, I'd recommend this book for children from grade 3 on up through middle school.

A "must read" adventure story

This was a wonderful book to read,it was very entertaining. It held my attention and I coldn't put it down until I finished!! I live in Wisconsin and love reading about the west. I have lived in Wisconsin my whole life and have never been out west so this book made me feel like I was there. I live in Amery Wisconsin and I'm in the 8th grade. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone.

This scholarly work on the teachings of Bodhidharma sets a new standard. Not only does Broughton provide clear translations, but the volume of informative commentary has made this text my number one Bodhidharma resource. Broughton provides quality with quantity here, explaining unusual phrases from the ancient texts at page bottoms, and endnoting items requiring more thorough treatment. (The endnotes are generally both useful and quite insightful. My only "wish" is that the endnotes could be footnotes instead. This way, the reader could have simultaneous access to both the root text and Broughton's research. As it is, you have to flip back and forth a bit. This is a really minor quibble though, as footnoting everything would have the drawback of making the root text harder to read on its own - mostly by making the pages too "busy.")

This is not a book on "pop Zen"; it is a resource for those seeking to contextualize Tamo's teachings both historically and philosophically. Broughton makes a very good case that the "Two Entrances" commonly attributed to Tamo is actually the work of T'an-lin, an early Sanskritist. He points out that the character of the "Method for Quieting Mind," what he calls "Record I," is more consistent with what we know of Tamo's teaching. Broughton also discusses other members of Bodhidharma's circle, the supporting roles played by other sutras in these texts, and much more.

I believe that I can state objectively that this book represents a superb piece of research, and that Broughton has made Tamo's early teachings very accessible. It is my sincere hope that the author will continue working in this field. For anyone interested in the early development of Zen, this text is a fascinating read.

I live in the Buddhist hell of Too Many Zen Books. This nicely accompanies all my other ones, and clearly stands out in its own right.

Thorough and enlightening. Brilliant insights! Where has Prof. Broughton been all of these years?

Reader's intertested in Bodie's whole history have been ovewhelmed by books claiming to tell its "true" story. The difficult part is knowing which ones are closest to the truth. Two carefully researched books are essential. This is one of them. Piatt's attention to detail and years of research allowed him to tell Bodie's story from beginning to end. This is Bodie's definitive history from which all other books will be judged. Piatt's writing has the ability to describe with ease the complex technical and financial aspects of mining. He also does not neglect the social history of the town and writes about it's entire 100+ year history.
His style is frank and matter o' fact, as one would expect from an engineer, yet once one starts to delve into the facts about Bodie, it's own story is facinating and truly an amaizing tale worth reading.

The other important work on Bodie is Roger D. McGrath's Gunfighters, Highwaymen,& Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier, which corrects many of America's Wild West shoot-'em-up myths by studying actual crime in two western boomtowns: Aurora, Nevada, during the early 1860's and BODIE, California, around 1880.
Both Piatt and McGrath relied on Contemporary Records, making their books historically accurate as possible and bringing many little-known
facts to light.

Although heavily focused on the history of the Bodie mines rather than the history of the town and its occupants, this is an outstanding work on the most celebrated old west Gold Mine bonanza in the west. The author traces how the highs and lows of the mining camp drove investors in NYC and SF to invest in Bodie's mecurical history. The work is well researched, easy to read and shows the author's meticulous effort to craft an accurate history of the mines of fabled Bodie CA. Superb effort!

Bodie: "The Mines Are Looking Well . . ." is the first comprehensive, serious history of the famous old California ghost town. The author, Michael Piatt, spending two years of his life directly involved with Bodie as a California State Park Aide, leads the reader through a century of gold mining history beginning in 1859. The book, like no other, provides comprehensive details on the mining activity that took place in Bodie! Lavish photo captions, fascinating sidebars, and extensive endnotes are as interesting as the text. The book also contains many photos never before seen in print. Anyone interested in learning about Bodie and its principle industry should begin with this book. An amazing historical compilation of what took place in one of California's Old West ghost towns.